System and method for integrating off-line ratings of businesses with search engines

ABSTRACT

A computer program product is provided as a business rating system to rank business that are relevant to a given Internet search topic. Business ratings are stored in a ranking repository that can be optionally searched by the user along with a user-defined search engine query. The business ratings are compiled from off-line surveys provided for example by independent agencies and/or other off-line surveys obtained through web based rating services. The business ratings can optionally be compiled from on-line questionnaires attached to the search engine results. The business ratings assess the quality of the businesses in terms of “interactive” criteria such as customer satisfaction, professionalism, and cost and ease of use of the businesses&#39; products or services. The business rating system is comprised of an indexing engine, a query transformer, a search results transformer, a ranking based result sorter, an off-line ranking system, a metadata repository, and a ranking repository. The business rating system integrates the ratings with the search results, and ranks the search results based on such business ratings. In this manner, the user of a search engine receives feedback from other users about businesses of interest. Eventually, businesses with higher ratings will be ranked at the top of the search list, while business with lower ratings will be ranked lower.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application is related to patent application Ser. No. 09/488,470titled “System and Method for Integrating On-Line Ratings of Businesseswith Search Engines” which is filed by the same assignee as thisapplication on even date herewith, and which is incorporated herein byreference in its entirety.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

The present invention relates to the field of information retrieval, andparticularly to a computer software product and associated method forranking search results based on ratings of businesses from variousoff-line sources.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

The World Wide Web (WWW) is comprised of an expansive network ofinterconnected computers upon which businesses, governments, groups, andindividuals throughout the world maintain inter-linked computer filesknown as web pages. Users navigate these pages by means of computersoftware programs commonly known as Internet browsers. Due to the vastnumber of WWW sites, many web pages have a redundancy of information orshare a strong likeness in either function or title. The vastness of theunstructured WWW causes users to rely primarily on Internet searchengines to retrieve information or to locate businesses. These searchengines use various means to determine the relevance of a user-definedsearch to the information retrieved.

The authors of web pages provide information known as metadata, withinthe body of the hypertext markup language (HTML) document that definesthe web pages. A computer software product known as a web crawlersystematically accesses web pages, by sequentially following hypertextlinks from page to page. The crawler indexes the pages for use by thesearch engines using information about a web page as provided by itsaddress or Universal Resource Locator (URL), metadata, context, andother criteria found within the page. The crawler is run periodically toupdate previously stored data and to append information about newlycreated web pages. The information compiled by the crawler is stored ina metadata repository or database. The search engines search thisrepository to identify matches for the user-defined search rather thanattempt to find matches in real time.

Current search engines use a variety of criteria to order matches to theuser query and to rank the search results with higher quality pageslisted at the top of the search list. Assessing quality involves bothaccurately matching the user query and identifying a useful, current webpage. For instance, search engines may order the matches based on whatis referred to herein as “static criteria”. Exemplary static criteriaare the highest popularity, most recently updated, most visited, mostqueried, or most interconnected. It is common for users to limit thereview of their search to only the first few matches of the search list.

For consumers searching the WWW for businesses, the search methodsemployed by current search engines provide incomplete information forthe users to assess the quality of the businesses. The informationprovided by authors about their web sites, and the number of visits orqueries received by a business site, typically reflect the quality ofthe web pages, but do not provide information about the quality of thebusiness.

There is currently no adequate mechanism by which searches of businesssites can be ordered based upon interactive criteria about thebusinesses themselves, correlating higher quality search matches tohigher business satisfaction ratings. For example, popularity, is acommonly used static criterion which is determined by the number ofvisits or queries of business sites, and which may depend onadvertising, strategic business alliances, or creative naming of a site,and is therefore independent of customers satisfaction with the rankedbusinesses. Therefore, there is still an unsatisfied need for a systemand method that integrate user provided interactive criteria, such ascustomers and on-line users' satisfaction, with search engine results.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In accordance with the present invention, a computer program productincludes an information repository that contains ratings of web sitebusinesses. The ratings provided in this repository are integrated intothe search engine results. Methods for collecting these ratings include,but are not limited to offline surveys such as consumers reports andsurveys that are obtained through web or non-web based rating servicesthat assess, for example, customer satisfaction. In another embodiment,rankings are provided by an independent ranking system through eitheroffline or on-line surveys and the rankings are established independentof the search engine or the user of the search engine. Optionally,on-line questionnaires can be attached to the search engine, and theratings provided by such on-line questionnaires and offline ratings canbe weighted and combined to form a composite rating system.

The business rating system is comprised of an on-line indexing engine, aquery transformer, a search results transformer, a ranking based resultsorter, an off-line ranking system, an optional on-line ranking system,a metadata repository, and a ranking repository. The business ratingsystem integrates the off-line ratings (and optionally the on-lineratings) with the search results, and ranks and presents the integratedsearch results to the user based on such ratings. In this manner, theuser of a search engine receives feedback from other off-line andpossibly on-line users and/or customers about businesses of interest.Those businesses with higher ratings are ranked at the top of the searchlist.

In operation, the user enters a query in the user interface of thesearch engine. The search engine searches the metadata repository forsites that match the user query, and also searches the business ratingsrepository. One or more sites in the metadata search results maycorrespond to matches in the business ratings search. The search enginedetermines the rank of each corresponding site in the ranking databaseand ranks the search results based on interactive criteria about thebusinesses. The ranked results are then presented to the on-line user.

In a preferred embodiment, the off-line (and optionally on-line) userscomplete and submit on-line surveys that are integrated with the searchengine results. The information provided by the users is recorded andevaluated for the purpose of ranking the businesses. The ratings aremade available to future users of the search engines. In anotherembodiment, in addition to a numerical rating system, the currenton-line users may include descriptive annotations regarding customersatisfaction to be read by future users. In this manner, qualitative aswell as quantitative feedback may be provided by the current users andexamined by future users.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The various features of the present invention and the manner ofattaining them will be described in greater detail with reference to thefollowing description, claims, and drawings, wherein reference numeralsare reused, where appropriate, to indicate a correspondence between thereferenced items, and wherein:

FIG. 1 is a schematic illustration of an exemplary operating environmentin which a business rating system of the present invention may be used;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the architecture of the business ratingsystem of FIG. 1, shown employing an on-line ranking system;

FIG. 3 is comprised of FIGS. 3A and 3B, and represents a flow chartdepicting the operation of the business rating system of FIG. 1;

FIG. 4 is an exemplary viewport illustrating an on-line rating surveyused by the business rating system of FIG. 1 to rank search results; and

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of the architecture of another embodiment ofthe business rating system of FIG. 1, shown employing an off-lineranking system and optionally an on-line ranking system.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The following definitions and explanations provide backgroundinformation pertaining to the technical field of the present invention,and are intended to facilitate the understanding of the presentinvention without limiting its scope:

Crawler: A program that automatically explores the World Wide Web byretrieving a document and recursively retrieving some or all thedocuments that are linked to it.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): A standard language for attachingpresentation and linking attributes to informational content withindocuments. During a document authoring stage, HTML “tags” are embeddedwithin the informational content of the document. When the web document(or “HTML document”) is subsequently transmitted by a web server to aweb browser, the tags are interpreted by the browser and used to parseand display the document. In addition to specifying how the web browseris to display the document, HTML tags can be used to create hyperlinksto other web documents.

Internet: A collection of interconnected public and private computernetworks that are linked together with routers by a set of standardsprotocols to form a global, distributed network.

Search engine: A remotely accessible World Wide Web tool that allowsusers to conduct keyword searches for information on the Internet.

Server: A software program or a computer that responds to requests froma web browser by returning (“serving”) web documents.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): A unique address that fully specifiesthe location of a content object on the Internet. The general format ofa URL is protocol://server-address/path/filename.

Web browser: A software program that allows users to request and readhypertext documents. The browser gives some means of viewing thecontents of web documents and of navigating from one document toanother.

Web document or page: A collection of data available on the World WideWeb and identified by a URL. In the simplest, most common case, a webpage is a file written in HTML and stored on a web server. It ispossible for the server to generate pages dynamically in response to arequest from the user. A web page can be in any format that the browseror a helper application can display. The format is transmitted as partof the headers of the response as a MIME type, e.g. “text/html”,“image/gif”. An HTML web page will typically refer to other web pagesand Internet resources by including hypertext links.

Web Site: A database or other collection of inter-linked hypertextdocuments (“web documents” or “web pages”) and associated data entities,which is accessible via a computer network, and which forms part of alarger, distributed informational system such as the WWW. In general, aweb site corresponds to a particular Internet domain name, and includesthe content of a particular organization. Other types of web sites mayinclude, for example, a hypertext database of a corporate “intranet”(i.e., an internal network which uses standard Internet protocols), or asite of a hypertext system that uses document retrieval protocols otherthan those of the WWW.

World Wide Web (WWW): An Internet client-server hypertext distributedinformation retrieval system.

FIG. 1 portrays the overall environment in which a business ratingsystem 10 according to the present invention may be used. The businessrating system 10 includes a software or computer program product whichis typically embedded within, or installed on a host server 15 andintegrated with a web browser. Alternatively, the business rating system10 can be saved on a suitable storage medium such as a diskette, a CD, ahard drive, or like devices. Although the business rating system 10 willbe described in connection with the WWW, it should be clear that thebusiness rating system 10 can be used with a stand-alone database ofterms that may have been derived from the WWW and/or other sources.

The cloud-like communication network 20 is comprised of communicationlines and switches connecting servers such as servers 25, 27, togateways such as gateway 30. The servers 25, 27 and the gateway 30provide the communication access to the WWW Internet. Users, such asremote Internet users are represented by a variety of computers such ascomputers 35, 37, 39, and can query the business rating system 10 forthe desired information.

The host server 15 is connected to the network 20 via a communicationslink such as a telephone, cable, or satellite link. The servers 25, 27can be connected via high speed Internet network lines 44, 46 to othercomputers and gateways. The servers 25, 27 provide access to storedinformation such as hypertext or web documents indicated generally at50, 55, 60. The hypertext documents 50, 55, 60 most likely includeembedded hypertext link to other locally stored pages, and hypertextlinks 70, 72, 74, 76 to other webs sites or documents 55, 60 that arestored by various web servers such as the server 27.

The business rating system 10 will now be described with furtherreference to FIG. 2. The business rating system 10 includes a computerprogram product such as a software package, which is generally comprisedof an on-line indexing engine 100, a query transformer 110, a searchresults transformer 130, a ranking based result sorter 140, an on-lineranking system 150, a metadata repository 160, and an on-line rankingrepository 170.

In use, the crawler visits and downloads web documents to the metadatarepository 160 where they are stored and updated systematically. The webdocuments are then indexed by the indexing engine 100 to generateindexed data 175. The on-line ranking system 150 receives users' on-linesurveys or feedbacks, and generates ranking data for storage in theon-line ranking repository 170. While the business rating system 10 isdescribed as including two repositories 160, 170, it should be clearthese two repositories 160, 170 can be functionally combined in a singledatabase.

The query transformer 110, prompted by a user browser 200, applies aninternal query request to the indexed data 175, and generates queryresults (or matches) 180 that are specific to the user's query. Theranking based result sorter 140 sorts the query results 180 based on therating data from the on-line ranking repository 170, and generatesranked matches 185. Once the query matches are sorted or rankedaccording to business ratings and/or other factors, the ranked matches185 are transformed into viewable or browsable form (i.e., HTML) by thetransformer 130. The transformed data is subsequently presented to theuser at the user interface (UI) or browser 200.

According to one embodiment, the user has the option to complete abusiness ratings survey form 455 (FIG. 4) presented with the searchresults (whether or not the search results are ranked or not), forsubmitting new rating information regarding the businesses to theon-line ranking system 150. This new rating information will beintegrated with the rating data already stored in the on-line rankingrepository 170 for use in subsequent searches.

Having described the main components of the business ratings system 10,its operation will now be explained in connection with FIGS. 2 through4. The method of operation 300 of the business rating system 10 of FIG.2 is illustrated in the flowchart of FIG. 3 (FIGS. 3A and 3B). The usersubmits a query to the business rating system 10 using the userinterface 200 at step 305. The user query is transformed at step 310into a query request that is internal or proprietary to the searchengine, by means of the query transformer 110.

At step 320, the internal query request is referred to the indexed data175. The compilation of the indexed data 175 is carried out in advance,and is depicted at blocks or steps 325, 330, and 335 of FIG. 3A. Thecompilation of the indexed data 175 starts at step 325 by having one ormore crawlers search the WWW 20, and download the web documents to themetadata repository 160 at step 330. At step 335, the indexing engine100 indexes the content of the web documents or the metadata of the webdocuments, and stores the indexed data in the metadata repository 160 orin another dedicated database.

For a given query generated at step 305, and for a database of indexeddata 175, the method 300 searches the indexed data 175 for query matchesat step 350. The step of matching the query against the indexed data isexecuted by the search engine. Discovering relevant matches is carriedout by discovering instances where the user defined search wordssignificantly overlap with those in the indexed data 175.

At decision block 360, the method 300 determines whether or not matcheshave been found within the indexed data 175. If no matches are found theuser is prompted for another search at step 365. An affirmative answerto the inquiry at step 365 returns the user to the search engineinterface 200 (step 305). A negative answer to this inquiry ends thesearch session at step 370.

If, however, the method 300 determines at step 360 that matches havebeen discovered, it proceeds to block 375 where the user selects thedesired business rating option. For example the user can activate orturn off the business rating feature using the browser 200. In anotherembodiment, the user can select or toggle specific rating features ON orOFF. For example, the user can choose to order the matches to be rankedprimarily according to other users' satisfaction and secondarilyaccording to business competence, while disregarding price comparison.

The process 300 then inquires at decision block 380 if the user hasactivated the business rating option. A negative result directs thebusiness rating system 10 to output the search results, at step 385,without reordering (or ranking) based on the business ratings. Thesearch results could still be ranked according to conventional staticcriteria. The user is then prompted at step 390 to rank the businessesin the search results. If the user elects to provide rating data, thebrowser 200 sends the rating data to the business rating system 10 whereit is stored in the on-line ranking repository 170 at step 395.

The rating data is stored in the ranking repository 170 in severalfields, such as: the URL of the web site or address of the document; thebusiness rating provided by the user; and the user's e-mail address. Theuser's e-mail address is recorded in an effort to create a user'sprofile history. This profile history enables the user to update oroverride the rating previously provided by this user but not the ratingsprovided by other users.

If at step 390 the user elects not to provide rating data, the method300 advances to decision step 365 and therefrom proceeds as describedearlier.

In the event of an affirmative response to the inquiry at step 380, thequery results 180 are then referred to the ranking based result sorter140 at step 400, where the query results 180 are cross-referenced withthe items stored in the ranking repository 170. At step 410, the sorter140 ranks the query matches 185 accounting for the on-line providedratings. In one embodiment, the user controls the ranking of the querymatches by selecting and prioritizing the parameters according to whichthe query matches are ranked. The ranked (or re-ordered) matches 185 arethen transformed into a browsable form at step 420, and displayed at theuser interface 200, at step 385, wherefrom the method 300 proceeds todecision step 390 as described earlier.

Decision step 390 will now be illustrated with reference to FIG. 4 thatshows an exemplary viewport 450 listing five matches 185 that are rated,and ranked in part based on their respective ratings. In this example,the user-defined query is for “hair stylist”, and the correspondingsearch result created by the business rating system 10 includes fivesmatches 185. Upon the user's request to rank the business, the user ispresented with the search results as well as the “Current Ratings” ofthe business. The user is also presented with a graphical on-line ratingsurvey 455 which is integrated with the query results 185. Thecumulative rating computation can be weighted based upon other ratings aparticular user may have provided. Several rating schemes can be used toenhance the ranking quality. The business rating system 10 may simplyprovide a list of count of “5”s, “4”s, “3”s, “2”s, and “1”s ratings fora business.

By providing the ratings for a site across from its occurrence in asearch result, a user can select the business that best suits thatparticular user's needs. In addition, the business rating system 10 is aself correcting system in that after a certain period of use, the users'interactive ratings could significantly affect the ranking of thebusinesses, and ultimately, lower ranked businesses stand lower chancesof being browsed and thus selected. For example, if a user selects asite that had an initially high ranking and was not satisfied with thebusiness, that user gives a poor rating to the business. If a reasonablenumber of users give a similarly poor rating to the same business, thebusiness site will automatically ranked lower.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of the architecture of another business ratingsystem 500 according to another embodiment of the present invention. Thebusiness rating system 500 is generally similar in function and designto the business rating system 10 of FIG. 2. The main difference betweenthe business rating systems 10 and 500 is that the business ratingsystem 500 employs an off-line ranking system 520 and optionally theon-line ranking system 150, for providing users with business ratingsfrom off-line sources.

The business rating system 500 further includes the indexing engine 100,the query transformer 110, the search results transformer 130, theranking based result sorter 140, the off-line ranking system 520,optionally the on-line ranking system 150, the metadata repository 160,and a ranking repository 570. The ranking repository 570 stores ratingdata accumulated by the off-line ranking system 520 and optionally bythe on-line ranking system 150 as described above.

The operation of the business rating system 500 is illustrated by themethod 300 of FIG. 3, with some changes in the interpretation of certainblocks. For example, at steps 375 and 380 the user selects the desiredbusiness rating option for ranking the search results. The user hasthree options to select from: the first option is to activate theranking feature based solely on ratings from the off-line ranking system520; the second option is to activate the ranking feature based solelyon ratings from the on-line ranking system 150, as explained earlier;and the third option is to activate the ranking feature based oncomposite ratings from both the off-line ranking system 520 and theon-line ranking system 150.

It is to be understood that the specific embodiments of the inventionthat have been described are merely illustrative of certain applicationof the principle of the present invention. Numerous modifications may bemade to the business ratings system and associated method describedherein without departing from the spirit and scope of the presentinvention. Moreover, while the present invention is described forillustration purpose only in relation to the WWW, it should be clearthat the invention is applicable as well to databases and other tableswith indexed entries.

1. A self-correcting system for use with a search engine to rank searchresults based upon a ranking of businesses that are selected from anunrestricted pool of merchants, comprising: an off-line ranking systemfor receiving any of users' off-line surveys or feedback aboutbusinesses; the off-line ranking system generating rating data from theany of the users' off-line surveys or feedback; wherein the rating datacorrelates higher quality search matches to higher business satisfactionratings; wherein the off-line ranking system indexes the rating data; aranking repository for storing the rating data indexed by the off-lineranking system; a result sorter for sorting query results generated bythe search engine, based on the rating data from the ranking repository,and for generating ranked matches; a profile manager for creating a userprofile history from a user's address; wherein the user profile historyenables the user to update a rating that was previously provided by theuser, and disables the user from revising ratings provided by otherusers; and wherein updated cumulative business satisfaction ratings fromthe users' on-line surveys or feedback automatically cause the on-lineranking system to re-index the rating data, and further cause the resultsorter to generate ranked matches based on the re-indexed rating data.2. The system according to claim 1, further including a search resultstransformer that converts the ranked matches to a user browsable form.3. The system according to claim 2, further including an indexing enginethat indexes web documents to generate indexed data.
 4. The systemaccording to claim 3, further including a metadata repository forstoring web documents that have been downloaded off-line.
 5. The systemaccording to claim 3, further including a query transformer which, whenprompted by a query, applies a query request to the indexed data andgenerates the query results.
 6. The system according to claim 1, furtherincluding an on-line ranking system for receiving rating data compiledfrom an on-line source based on interactive criteria, and for indexingon-line rating data.
 7. The system according to claim 1, wherein theoff-line source includes any one or more of a questionnaire, a survey, anon-web based rating service, or a web based rating service.
 8. Thesystem according to claim 1, wherein the interactive criteria assess thequality of a business in terms of any one or more of: customersatisfaction, professionalism, cost, and ease of use of a product orservice.
 9. A self-correcting computer program product for use with asearch engine to rank search results based upon a ranking of businessesthat are selected from an unrestricted pool of merchants, comprising: anoff-line ranking system for receiving any of users' off-line surveys orfeedback about businesses; the off-line ranking system generating ratingdata from the any of the users' off-line surveys or feedback; whereinthe rating data correlates higher quality search matches to higherbusiness satisfaction ratings; wherein the off-line ranking systemindexes the rating data; a ranking repository for storing the ratingdata indexed by the off-line ranking system; a result sorter for sortingquery results generated by the search engine, based on the rating datafrom the ranking repository, and for generating ranked matches; aprofile manager for creating a user profile history from a user'saddress; wherein the user profile history enables the user to update arating that was previously provided by the user, and disables the userfrom revising ratings provided by other users; and wherein updatedcumulative business satisfaction ratings from the users' on-line surveysor feedback automatically cause the on-line ranking system to re-indexthe rating data, and further cause the result sorter to generate rankedmatches based on the re-indexed rating data.
 10. The computer programproduct according to claim 9, further including a search resultstransformer that converts the ranked matches to a user browsable form.11. The computer program product according to claim 10, furtherincluding an indexing engine that indexes web documents to generateindexed data.
 12. The computer program product according to claim 11,further including a metadata repository for storing web documents thathave been downloaded off-line.
 13. The computer program productaccording to claim 11, further including a query transformer which, whenprompted by a query, applies a query request to the indexed data andgenerates the query results.
 14. The computer program product accordingto claim 9, further including an on-line ranking system for receivingrating data compiled from an on-line source based on interactivecriteria, and for indexing on-line rating data.
 15. The computer programproduct according to claim 9, wherein the off-line source includes anyone or more of a questionnaire, a survey, or a web based rating service.16. The computer program product according to claim 9, wherein theinteractive criteria assess the quality of a business in terms of anyone or more of: customer satisfaction, professionalism, cost, and easeof use of a product or service.
 17. A method for use with a searchengine to self-correctively rank search results based upon a ranking ofbusinesses that are selected from an unrestricted pool of merchants,comprising: receiving any of users' off-line surveys or feedback aboutbusinesses; the off-line ranking system generating rating data from theany of the users' off-line surveys or feedback; the rating datacorrelating higher quality search matches to higher businesssatisfaction ratings; indexing the rating data by means of an off-lineranking system; storing the rating data indexed by the off-line rankingsystem, in a ranking repository; sorting query results generated by thesearch engine, based on the rating data from the ranking repository, andfor generating ranked matches; creating a user profile history from auser's address; wherein the user profile history enables the user toupdate a rating that was previously provided by the user, and disablesthe user from revising ratings provided by other users; and whereinupdated cumulative business satisfaction ratings from the users' on-linesurveys or feedback automatically cause the on-line ranking system tore-index the rating data, and further cause the result sorter togenerate ranked matches based on the re-indexed rating data.
 18. Themethod according to claim 17, further including transforming the rankedmatches into a user browsable form.
 19. The method according to claim18, further including indexing web documents to generate indexed data.20. The method according to claim 19, further including storing webdocuments that have been downloaded off-line.
 21. The method accordingto claim 19, further including applying a query request to the indexeddata for generating the query results.
 22. The method according to claim17, wherein receiving rating data includes compiling rating data from anon-line ranking system based on interactive criteria, and indexing theon-line rating data.
 23. The method according to claim 17, whereinreceiving rating data includes compiling rating data from any one ormore of a questionnaire, a survey, or a web based rating service. 24.The method according to claim 17, further including compiling ratingdata based on interactive criteria that assess the quality of a businessin terms of any one or more of: customer satisfaction, professionalism,cost, and ease of use of a product or service.
 25. A search resultservice for use with a search engine to self-correctively rank searchresults based upon a ranking of businesses that are selected from anunrestricted pool of merchants, comprising: receiving any of users'off-line surveys or feedback about businesses; generating rating datafrom the any of the users' off-line surveys or feedback; wherein therating data correlates higher quality search matches to higher businesssatisfaction ratings; indexing the rating data by means of an off-lineranking system; storing the rating data indexed by the off-line rankingsystem, in an off-line ranking repository; sorting query resultsgenerated by the search engine, based on the rating data from theoff-line ranking repository, and for generating ranked matches; creatinga user profile history from a user's address; wherein the user profilehistory enables the user to update a rating that was previously providedby the user, and disables the user from revising ratings provided byother users; and wherein updated cumulative business satisfactionratings from the users on-line surveys or feedback automatically causethe on-line ranking system to re-index the rating data, and furthercause the result sorter to generate ranked matches based on there-indexed rating data.
 26. The search result service according to claim25, further comprising transforming the ranked matches into a userbrowsable form.
 27. The search result service according to claim 26,further comprising indexing web documents to generate indexed data. 28.The search result service according to claim 27, further comprisingstoring web documents that have been downloaded off-line.
 29. The searchresult service according to claim 27, further comprising applying aquery request to the indexed data for generating the query results. 30.The search result service according to claim 25, wherein receivingrating data comprises compiling rating data from an on-line rankingsystem based on interactive criteria, and indexing the on-line ratingdata.
 31. The search result service according to claim 25, whereinreceiving rating data comprises compiling rating data from any one ormore of a questionnaire, a survey, or a web based rating service. 32.The search result service according to claim 25, further comprisingcompiling rating data based on interactive criteria that assess thequality of a business in terms of any one or more of: customersatisfaction, professionalism, cost, and ease of use of a product orservice.